


Sir Dinadan's Tale

by mattador



Series: The Knight of the Star [2]
Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-28 16:40:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/309881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mattador/pseuds/mattador
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sir Gawain has returned to Camelot from quest victorious, but dispirited.  Dinadan can relate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sir Dinadan's Tale

**Author's Note:**

  * For [winterhill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterhill/gifts), [Soujin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soujin/gifts).



Gawain stumbled into Camelot on the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul, frostbitten and snow-blind. For a moment his gaunt, wan countenance made many mistake him for a ghost, but in the next moment the company gave a great shout, and half the assembled knights ran to him-- Agravaine, and Yvaine, and Lancelot, Bedivere and Sagramore and Arthur himself rushing to embrace him, crying out their joy that he had been delivered back to them alive. He smiled, wearily, and took their joy and their berating alike, for Agravaine and Yvaine both were sore vexed by his quiet departure without them, who had promised to ride with him. At Arthur's decree, in his honor, the feasting carried on for a second day, and then a third, for the Feast of Our Lady of Peace. Each day they besought him to speak of his adventure, and each day he demurred, as courteously as he could.

 

“Will you tell us how you came to survive?” Sir Lucan asked, directly, after an evening of suggestive silences and conversational flanking maneuvers from all the rest of the Table, save a conspicuously haughty and disinterested Sir Kay. Gawain assumed that meant Kay, too, was plagued by curiosity, or he would have asked in order to be impolite.

 

“I am still much tired,” Gawain said, truthfully. All the wine and warmth and rich food were as a lullaby to him, and after travel and ordeal he was weary already. “It is late, and the tale would be long, and much of it confuses me still. Besides, the most marvelous part of the tale you witnessed in this very hall, a year and a month ago. Surely, there is a better tale that I have missed, of whatever miracle came as Merlin vouchsafed, this New Year?”

 

“Yes,” said Lucan, hesitating. “But I saw only the beginning of it, again. One year, perhaps, it may be my quest, but at present the tale belongs to Sir Dinadan, and he should tell it.”

 

Sir Kay and Sir Ector, as Arthur's foster-family, had been his first sworn knights; and from the men loyal to King Uther he had inherited Sir Ulfius and Sir Brastias. But the brothers Sir Lucan and Sir Bedivere had been the first two knights that had come to serve him from afar, for his own sake as their High King, and their cousin, Sir Jaufre, had been the first man who Arthur knighted with his own hands. Dinadan had been Jaufre's squire, last year, when Gawain had been the youngest knight of the Round Table, and though only thirteen months had passed since the Green Knight's challenge, when looking at the company now assembled at the Table, Gawain felt he had aged even more. Dinadan had ought to have been currying Jaufre's horse or buckling on his armor, not girding himself and riding off on quest – but, Gawain thought, looking at Sir Lucan's wistfulness, perhaps there were knights who had thought the same of him not long past.

 

“Oh, and I’ll gladly tell the tale,” Dinadan said, draping himself over the chair next to them. “How could I refuse? For the greater glory of King and Kingdom, for Chivalry and Christendom, and, of course, for Sir Dinadan. I have to make my name, of course. As my father Sir Breunor of Broceliande is Le Chevalier Sans Crainte, perhaps I can be Le Chevalier Sans Contrainte. And glad we all may be, Sir Gawain, that you are not Le Chevalier Sans Tete. These sorts of styles and titles ought to be passed along in families, don’t you think?” He smiled winningly, and perhaps a little giddily, as the words tripped glibly off his tongue. He was, Gawain saw, a little the worse for wine, but not overmuch. He had not been as voluble as a squire, or at least, he had not been so within Gawain’s hearing.

“I had a wager with Pinel and Lionel, you see,” Dinadan continued after a moment. “For our portions of meat and of pudding at the feast. I had bet upon a hart, this year, while Pinel thought, over-hopefully, that a maiden would come bearing the quest, and Lionel believed it would be another knight, but we had one of those last year. I’d hoped to find takers for brachet, or dwarf, or perhaps a dragon, but damned if the best of us squires hadn’t been stolen away and knighted this year, and that prig Bors informed us all that it was a sin to gamble, especially so close following Our Lord’s Natal Day. Myself, I think Bors is over-fond of his pudding.

 

“Just at the hour when dinner was set on the tables, a beautiful youth strode into the room – a boy, but still fairer even than Bedivere, wearing a wreath of starling-feathers, and robed in figured black damask, milk-skinned and raven-haired. He made his bows very prettily, but when he spoke, his voice was hoarse and croaking. He claimed he had a great treasure hoarded away in his home, and that he'd come to offer it to any knight who could beat he and his brothers on their own terms – but if they failed they would forfeit all they owned, even down to their bones.

 

“You might imagine that after losing yourself to just such a blackhearted challenge the year before – and not a man in the room wasn't wondering but where you were just then, alive or dead – that they would despise such an offer, but I tell you they were mad for it, until Sir Lancelot said, as cool as you please 'Pray, then, tell us your terms, and your brothers' as well.' The boy bowed to him, smiled a little smile, and confessed that he and his brothers employed wit and word as their weapons, and it was with those and no other that they sought to tilt our good knights. After that, I swear to you, it was so quiet in the hall that we could all hear the grumbling of poor Bors' stomach.”

 

Dinadan grimaced. “Tell you truly, Gawain, I had never a thought in my head for taking up such a quest. I wager my life in battle, or in trial, or in service to a just cause – I came to the Round Table full intent on swearing the oath we all share, and living each word of it – but I've no truck with risking my bones for the sake of a game. But the shame of letting anyone believe that strong arms are not backed up by quicker minds – and quicker tongues, by Jesu, Sir Kay at least is proof of that – that would be too much to bear. Yvaine and Lancelot both offered, full reluctant but valorous, to take up this quest, but I made a spectacle of myself and rushed forward to kneel before Arthur, and begged of him my knighthood so that I might fulfill this quest, and have ado with this fey youth and his brothers.

 

“Of course, he granted it me, and right gladly, for our King is generous, and never able to to let his hospitality fail any time a boon is begged, whatever it may be. Sir Jaufre armed me, though the youth insisted my sword and armor would come to no use, and Pinel begged Pellinor see me horsed, though the youth claimed that the cave in which his brothers kept their treasure was but an easy stroll thence. And I set out forthwith, though damned if I wasn't vexed at the thought I was leaving my pudding behind where Bors might get at it, and missing the finest feast of the year besides. So I was grieved, Gawain, and fretting, as we set forth from Camelot.

 

“I led my courser rather than ride, and asked the boy what I might call him, and he said that his name he guarded, but that I might call him Starling Eater, and his brothers Magpie Eater and Raven Eater. I told him that might be so, but by the end of the evening one or the other of us would be eating crow. He nodded, ever solemn, and said that might well be true, but the other would be feeding crows, which stole away some small measure of my joy. We left Camelot by a shepherd's track, winding up into the hills, and before long came to a grove of hazel and elder trees.

 

Between the trees was a cleft in the rock, washed green, grey, and red by the lichen that crawled over the fractured slabs of bluish stone. Against the scattering of snow it was bright and alarming, and while Starling Eater stood at the entrance, I tethered my horse on the naked bough of a withered ash that stood nearby. Ducking my head under the stone lintel, I saw that all inside was darksome and vile, the floor being coated in a thin layer of sticky mud and carpeted atop it not with rushes but with down and the feathers of countless birds. Piled in a corner were broken eggshells, and atop them a careful pyramid of shells broken only at the bottom and sucked dry. Beside these, and more disturbing, was a pile of shoes -- some as new and fine-cobbled as my own, some rotting scraps of leather and little else. A large nest of shredded cloth was tucked in an alcove behind it.

“Stand you ready for our joust, Sir Dinadan?” The unnatural child asked in his hoarse voice.

“I am,” I said. “Though a courteous host would first offer me a seat, and a glass of wine to whet my throat.”

“Would you drink of what I offered you?” Starling Eater asked, curiously tilting his head to one side. I told him I would, unless he had cause to be ashamed of his vintages, and he stood silent and unlaughing.

“Stand you ready?” he asked again, after the chill had time to seep in my bones, and this time I said merely “Yes.”

“These are the rules of our game,” he said. “I will strike at you with a riddle as my lance. If it go unanswered, you are overthrown. If it is answered true, then your wit is the most cunning, and I am overthrown. The knight overthrown suffers the fate of the overthrown, to be trampled under the hooves of his horse, and greatly I thank you for bringing one, for else your fate would have been held in abeyance while we sought for so noble a creature.”

 

“Gramercy,” I said, and bowed, but no courtesy was in him now and he ignored it, still speaking,

 

“Should you win, or should you live, then it will be time to tilt with Magpie Eater, whose game may be different than mine, or it may not.” As that covered the options entirely I stayed silent, and after a moment the fey boy cleared his throat – an awful noise, like the scrape of whetstones and the clatter of bones – and assayed his riddle.

 

“Sir Dinadan has adventured into a lonely wood. He finds a bridge before him guarded by a monstrous giant with an axe and cord. The blade of the axe is brown with encrusted blood, the cord twisted together in blonde and russet scalps, and the skulls of many men lie around him, gaping warning, clad only in what ragged scraps of flesh the birds disdained. Says the giant 'All knights who would cross this bridge must tell me something of themselves. If they speak truly, then I choke them until they are dead. If they speak false, then my axe will take their head. Tell me, Sir Dinadan, what Dinadan must say to save his life?”

 

The boy smiled, gloatingly, and I stared at him, trying to sort through his words. My mind returned again and again to the grisly descriptions and the grim darkness of the cave about me. Whatever Dinadan-of-the-riddle said, true or false, he would be slain, and whatever this Dinadan, of the sweating hands and dry mouth, reported him as saying, he too would be slain, horribly, trampled beneath his own horse, but newly given him. The boy's smile had sharp, inhuman teeth in it, and I wondered in vain if I could explain to the unholy child that knights but seldom fell beneath their horse's hooves when they fell – it was rare even in the chaos of tourney, and unheard-of in the lists. Perhaps he would care to strangle me instead, or seek out the Green Knight so that his axe might be used on my neck?

 

It was a moment of fear, and not my knightliest. But then, I was new-made a knight. Though my hot blood had cooled, I still had every faith in the agility of my wit, if I could free it from the mire of terror Starling Eater's horrid words evoked. How would I answer this question seated at the Round Table, in full comfort? What if I was threatened at the bridge but pray, a gentler image? Sir Lancelot in the Queen's most flattering dress, perchance?

 

At this thought, my horror faded, and almost I smiled – but it seemed uncouth to smile at a lad, however unnatural, that was bound so nearly to his death.

 

“Sir Dinadan would say 'I am to be beheaded by your axe,'” I replied, and Starling Eater's face purpled with rage, and he gnashed his teeth.

 

“You will not find my brothers so easy prey,” he cried, and darted between the hooves of my courser, biting at its chest fiercely so that it reared and dashed its hooves upon him until he was a mess of a corpse, and no more.

 

I' faith, I looked away, and so saw a dark-haired, pale-skinned figure, much of my own age, step quietly from a crevice at the cavern's rear that bent at a clever angle and so had seemed far too narrow to be used as a passage. He was dressed piebald, in white and black samite like the finest of feasting clothes, and around his head was a circlet of magpie feathers, a necklace of bird-skulls laced together with pale sinews about his neck.

 

“Hast slain my brother, good knight,” he said, his voice a crone's croak despite his fairness. “But his wisdom was little, for starlings are no bird of omen. Many confounding secrets I have taken into me, Dinadan of Broceliande, new-forged knight, and they shall be the death of you.”

 

“Perhaps if you faced me alone I would then despair me,” I replied, over-boldly, “but as you are the second I face, should I not be joyed?”

 

“Since I woke in the morning I have eaten seven times seven magpies,” he answered, as humorless as the last. “Try not to best me in a game of numbers, Dinadan, for I contain multitudes. Ready yourself for the game between us.”

 

“And what game shall that be?” I asked. My temper had cooled again, but my wit was still hot. If I declared myself ready without being certain of the rules... Magpie Eater smiled with pointed teeth.

 

“My riddle has two answers,” Magpie Eater said. “And it is two true answers you must speak to spare your life. Yet your wit may be your shield, once and once alone – should you err, you may defend yourself with a riddle. An I cannot answer it, your life is saved. Should I unravel it, or should you err twice before stating both truths, and your flesh is forfeit. As before, you shall be crushed beneath your horse's hooves and all that remain of you and all that you own shall enrich my elder brother and I. Stand you ready, unwise knight?”

 

“Were I unwise,” I told him, “it would be the less worship to you, to joust against an unarmed man. Behold my spear and panoply and remember you well that I am no magpie.”

 

He smiled cruelly at my boast, then, and quoth him his riddle.

 

“These that I pick from my teeth

Build cities, e'en kingdoms, when strong

Hold up each mind from beneath

and when broken or bent, do great wrong.”

 

Then I exulted, for it seemeth to me the answer was plain.

 

“Bones,” I said, “and the more fool you, to set such a puzzle in this place, clad as you are, with my answer strewn about before my eye.”

 

“That is but half your answer,” he said shortly. “Seek you the other half, Sir Dinadan, or admit that thou art overthrown.”

 

“That will I never,” I answered him, and ran again the words of the riddle in my head. What beside a skull held a man's mind? What beside an arm built a city? What more did a creature such as he pick from his teeth – feathers, surely, and perhaps to a bird such things might do great wrong, were they broken or bent – but they upheld no minds and built no kingdoms, did they? Unless... unless it was feathers that gave him their secrets, upholding his mind, and unless that circlet upon his head of a magpie's pinions were more princely than it seemed.

 

I troubled over the answer, and thought, while Magpie Eater's eyes glittered darkly, and he continued to smile his narrow smile. The breath that passed between his painted teeth was fetid, foul – and as I hesitated over my answer he stepped closer to me, and closer again, still flow paces that shrank the distance between us to the intimate.

 

“Feathers!” I exclaimed at last, and his smile grew greater and more awful.

 

“Defend you, Dinadan, for has erred grievously, and struck afar of the truth.” He stepped closer, and I held up a hand to forestall him.

 

“Wait!” I cried. “Wait. I have a riddle to defend myself with.”

 

“Foolish boy,” he said, “in my time I have swallowed every secret of men's minds. Any shield you raise, my tongue will cleave in twain.”

 

“That is as may be, “ I told him. “Yet the rules permit it to me nonetheless. And I am young, with many mysteries yet unmastered, and though I was a fool to accept this contest, I would seek to understand a little more, before I die. Therefore forebear a moment, gently, if you would, and consent to be my tutor in one little matter.”

 

“You intrigue me,” he said. “I will not disclose the magpie's secrets, yet if it is a matter I know of from within myself, and not from without, I will educate you by one answer to one question, before you venture your last defense.”

 

“By Jesu, I thank you,” I answered him, and noted as he flinched, lips curling in a snarl at the words.

 

“Ask,” he said, voice rising to a high pitch.

 

“The folk from which you come,” I began, “are much known for their mastery of speech. What you say has power – that is why you take such care with names, and contracts and the like. Does that mean, then – with this contract between us, in which we tilt with words as our lances – that you could say 'lance' and strike me? Is there such power in this game as that?”

 

“Such power and more indeed,” he replied. “I do not fear you will default from your bargain, and refuse to be trampled. My little brother, perhaps, would have needed your horse at hand, but not I.”

 

“Words,” I said, for the answer to his riddle had struck me, verily like the blow of a spear. “Words and bones, that is your answer. As for my defense – Bloody I am ripped from the earth, and bloodied I send men back to it.”

 

He shouted, half a thunderclap and half a bark, and his lips peeled back from his teeth, and he glowered as if his glance were a lance to strike me dead. For the answer, so simple, he knew at once, but could not speak. Iron, bane to the fey, and if I wot well the magic that bound us in our contest, that word, my defense, was real between us. I counted myself lucky that words and not gazes were given force by our contest, but still, to ward off the evil eye, I made the sign of the cross in the air between us, and he withdrew, shrinking into himself and casting down his eyes.

 

“By the rules of our game,” he said at last, raising his bowed head, “I am vanquished, for though I know the answer I cannot give tongue to it. Is it knightly, Sir Dinadan, to deceive your opponent thus?”

 

“In swordplay and the joust there are feints and gambits aplenty,” I replied, “and a cunning stroke of the sword your opponent cannot parry is never despised. Was it worshipful to ask me to use a riddle in my defense, if you know all riddles and their answers?”

 

“I do not worship, nor seek worship,” he rasped, humorless as his brother had been, but the words nonetheless had the sound of a catechism. He straightened, and turned toward the entrance of the cave, staring at his brother's mangled body beneath my courser's hooves. It stamped skittishly, and before he could move again I caught him lightly by the shoulder.

 

“Mercy, too, is knightly, and I am sworn to it. If you would, give me your parole, and be spared – or if you would not, kneel and receive a stroke from my sword. It will be the swifter end.”

 

“That was not in the contract between us,” he said, and smiled again. “But it shows a true heart, Dinadan, and will be echoed to your favor by lords and ladies beneath the hill for many an age – after my brother has slain you, wilt be remembered kindly.”

 

He wrenched himself from my grip with sudden force and flew at my horse, which reared and screamed a whinny, striking out with a hoof to dent his brow before he could close the distance. The blow flung him rag-limp to the ground. The reins twisted and snapped as the poor beast reared again and twisted, shying away from the corpse, wild-eyed and still screaming its dismay, and it bolted, fleeing into the enshrouding woods before I could move. Magpie Eater was still, the fairness of his face composed as in sleep, but marred by the slow creep of blood over cheek and forehead, shrouding his features in a scarlet veil.

 

I shuddered, and said a prayer for his soul, should he have one, and waited, but not overlong, for the third brother to show himself.

 

“Come to me, Sir Dinadan,” a rough, hoarse voice rumbled, echoing around me, and in the depths of the fracture in the wall Magpie Eater had emerged from, there was a flicker of firelight. It is said that pride is a sin, but I tell you truly, only my pride in my knighthood and my honor drew me to assay that crevice. At first, I would not fit through it. I shrugged out of my armor – no easy task, without a squire to aid me, long cold minutes – and once I had done that, I slipped through easily enough, stone fingers running over my flesh as I brushed against them. My scabbard would have caught, but it was discarded with my armor, and my sword naked in my hand. For truth, so much of me was naked that the sword seemed the least of my discourtesies.

 

Raven Eater sat at a table in the back of the cave, one that dripped tallow from its edges and held a sculpted landscape crested by silver candelabrum, except where the fissured slopes of melted and hardened wax had been shattered to make room for four place-settings. Two now were empty, leaving behind a scattering of bird-bones, and Raven-Eater sat in the third. The fourth was plainly meant for me, for it bore a cloth with my father's crest upon it. It was not new fabric, that drape, but so old its colors had faded and it had worn thin in places. But these things, all of them, as wondrous as they were, I did not see until later – for Raven Eater arrested all my attention. He was a tall man, fully grown, broad-shouldered and barrel-chested, with the scars and calluses of a knight plain upon him. He was as black-haired and fair-skinned as his brothers and his teeth as unnaturally sharp, though his eyes, unlike theirs, glinted an uncanny gold. The fingernails on his hands were black and came to dull points that clicked on the tabletop. His circlet of raven feathers was tangled into the arched, pronged shape of a rough crown, and he too wore his necklace of sinew and bird skulls. He was dressed all in sable furs – coat, cloak, and a kingly mantle, all of which were held to him with gruesome clasps – raven's feet, placed so that their talons laced and locked with one another, as neatly as any brooch or pin.

 

As I looked away from him, about the cave, everywhere was the glitter of metal in candle-light. Corselets of ring-mail and chain-mail hung like tapestries on the walls, and fine yellow coins marked with Caesar's face carpeted the floor. Gruesome trophy-piles of bones, neatly stacked, sat in the corners, of men and birds alike – and once, I thought, a griffin, or a wondrous beast much like one. Within the hollow of each ribcage were piled more trophies – a scattering of red gems in one, and in another many fine drinking-horns such as lords would bring to a feast, their ends piercing the ribs as though goring the remains again and again.

 

At last, I looked back to the table, and saw what I had not before – steam, rising from a plate set before my place at the table. As I stepped forward to see what it might be, Raven Eater addressed me again.

 

“Two brothers you have cost me today, Dinadan – with wit and nerve, and yet displayed all the virtues of knighthood. Yet I have more than a clever tongue or a knowledge of secrets – even the Wise reckon me to be wise. And so I offer you my hospitality, and life in the place of death, should you prefer it to the end of our contest. Sit, and eat...”

 

On the plate were three birds, plucked and roasted whole, with their feathers fanned out beneath them – a robin, a nightingale, and a mockingbird.

 

“And you may be as a brother to me, and share in my wealth and power – and may choose your own path to it. If there is another bird that suit you, but tell me of it, and I shall fetch it for you.”

 

“Then you fear you will lose,” I ventured, and he shook his head, flatly, smiling a narrow smile, and turned golden eyes on me.

 

“No,” he rumbled. “I know fear, inside and out, from the inward tremblings a courageous man will dismiss and deny, to the terror of the hunted, to the anguish of the mother for her young ones. And I feel none of them. But it is a lonely world, Sir Dinadan, without a like mind to share laughter with. You could be a truer brother to me than any who have dwelt here since the age of cold metal first reached this little isle. I value you. I would offer you a full share in all that is mine, if you would but consent to sup with me. But if you do not, in an hour's time you will feed my ravens, and they will feed me, and still you will be with me always; so I have nothing to fear.”

 

No jest rose to my lips, but my gorge indeed rose, to think of a damned life such as he suggested, trapped in a cavern luring honest knights to their death. And if his brothers, too, had once been men who dared his challenge... it were a far better fate to die and be eaten by birds.

 

“If we are to tilt with words, I ask you, lay down the rules of our game. For it would be sore uncouth were I to strike off your head with a sharp length of iron, and not what grace may remain in my tongue.”

 

“It is near on dusk,” he said, quietly, his voice still an uneven scrape. “By full dark, our game must be finished. As dark comes, the candles on the table will die. When the last of them dies, then too Sir Dinadan – save only if you solve the riddle of this cave. What is my name, Dinadan? Guess as many guesses as you will, and no error will be punished save the last. The lines of the riddle are all about you, and have been so since you tethered your steed outside – but can you piece them together?”

 

I bit down upon a protest before it could escape me. The glint of his eyes, so like the cold metal of the coins rattling on the floor under my feet, promised that there would be no appeal. It was, in its way, an honest challenge, and to myself I admitted that my mind had already been working steadily upon this same puzzle.

 

“Magpie Eater was a fox,” I said, staring into his golden eyes. “And Starling Eater, a dog by his nature. I am not privy to whatever mystery of the fey allows such as you to contain some essence of a beast within a human shape, but by your little brothers I know you – Wolf.”

 

Raven Eater grinned, and indeed it was a wolf's grin, broad gaping jaws and lolling tongue between pointed teeth, and the first of the candles flickered out.

 

“Aye,” he said. “I am a wolf, by a mystery you have declined to learn. But 'wolf' is not my name, Sir Dinadan, any more than thy name is 'man.'”

 

A second candle snuffed itself with a puff of oily smoke. “The more fool you to admit it,” I said. “For in my childhood my father hosted with us a hedge-knight from the east, a pagan, who told us stories of Odin. If you are Raven-Eater, then you are Skoll, Skoll Hrothvitnirsson.” One full candelabra had now gone dark, and the rest of the candles flickered as though their hearts raced as mine did, and were to stop almost as soon.

 

“No,” he said.

 

“Hati, then,” I accused him. “Or Fenrir himself, Fenrisulfr, Hrothvitnir.” I stumbled in my mind a moment, for though my memory was keen, and made more so in that moment out of the clarity of my fear, the gods of the Alemanii had many names. Raven Eater had reacted to none of these. “Geri,” I tried, naming one of the wolves who served Odin, and then “Freki,” the other, when he continued to smile.

 

“I am not from the East,” he said at last, with a dismissive breath, and three more candles extinguished themselves. But five remained. “I have dwelt in these hills for an age you could not begin to guess at, Dinadan. And I have never failed in my hunting. Relent you, now, and name what bird will be yours, and still you may be my newest brother. Better knights than you have served me before, and called that service good.”

 

“To call a thing is not to make it so,” I answered him, desperately, and one answer came to me. I could name the magpie, that knew all secrets, and eat of it, and perhaps defeat him still. Mockingbirds, too, were said to answer questions – if I but dipped my finger in the dish, I could gain that terrible knowledge and my victory both, and all it would take... was to lie, and also to admit not only my defeat but my ignorance. To call a thing was not to make it so. That was true.

 

“You are a wolf!” I cried, and he flinched, and another candle guttered. “This cave is a wolf's lair. Your brothers were human, made fox or dog by fey sorcery or by the deeds they did, the nature of their characters, but you – you are a wolf made man. As you hid their names behind their titles, you hid their own in plain sight. Raven Eater! That is your name!”

 

When I began my speech he had cringed away, curling in on himself, but now he barked a dismissive laugh that echoed in my ears.

 

“No,” he growled, voice no longer human in the least, and rose from his chair, hands curled into claw-shapes, shoulders hunched, a fearsome shadow moving about him in the light of one candle alone.

 

“You are a wolf,” I said again, more calmly, though I saw my death approaching. “And wolves have no names, not such as men do. There is no answer to your riddle. You have cheated me.” As I said it, I held forth my sword, though it felt a feeble defense, and the cave filled with darkness in the wake of the final candle. I thought again of the dishes on the table, and how I could reach them now unseen if I wished, and partake in both salvation and damnation at a single taste.

 

At last, my mind went to prayer, for it seemed that alone could save me. Or at least, perhaps, my soul, if my body was doomed, as every man since Adam but one has been doomed.

 

Adam, I thought, had been given the task of naming all God's creatures.

 

“I name you!” I cried aloud. “Greedy, priggish, self-satisfied – I have the perfect name for you!” I spoke it then, the name that had come into my head like so many other wicked thoughts, and though I will not repeat it to you perhaps you can guess it. I was sure of it, that this was the truth of his riddle – as any nameless beast, while safe from the power of names when wild, any man to encounter him might name him and tame him in the same act. But I did not trust to a name to stop him, balked and hungry and bestial, and struck out with my sword in the darkness, anticipating a leap at my throat.

 

The blade struck something unyielding and glanced off of it, and then I was left alone in the darkness with no sound but my breath for company. The light did not return. I waited a long time, sword quivering in my hand, anticipating a trick, a sudden rush or lunge for my throat. None came, and then I was left with the task I feared even more greatly – to feel my way along the stone in that fathomless darkness, discover what I might, and find the cloven place in the rock where I might slip through into to the outer chamber of the cave.

 

I will not speak of all that I found, but by morning, shivering and unkempt, I had walked back to the gates of Camelot. A few knights, at first, were inclined to believe the worse of me, for I had not returned with the vast treasure Starling Eater had spoken of, but there was blood on my sword, and two handfuls of coins minted as far back as Hadrian, and farther, and three woven circlets of feathers – one of them split in two.

So was my great victory, which brought worship to Arthur's court and to his table of knights, and to my humble self as well. So I will not be asking how your own New Year's quest passed, Sir Gawain, nor will it trouble me in any fashion that you do not wish to speak of it, or that in telling you may elide certain details. Of a certainty I have done so myself. For what we find in a quest are our own human failings, our limitations, and secrets that a magpie might know but a gentlemen would as fain not speak of before a hungry crowd of knighthood, thirsty for news and greedy for knowledge. Ah, Lucan, leave off your sour face. If you would not tell my story as you would like it told, then you must let me tell it as I have told it now.”

**Author's Note:**

> Set almost immediately after the end of The Knight of the Star.


End file.
